The University of Washington comes off a 4-8 season, its first losing record in a dozen years, its fewest number of victories since Tyrone Willingham's 2008 flatline team and no bowl game.
Which means Husky coaches and players were going to be held responsible for this sudden downturn, leading to significant change.
Kalen DeBoer arrived from Fresno State and replaced 8 of the 10 coaches on staff. Four players wandered off to the transfer portal, two of them starters up front from a run defense that didn't stop anyone. A new recruiting coordinator is now going door to door, selling the virtues of UW football.
Yet the Huskies can change all the schemes and formations they want, walk back the Dawg Walk or keep walking, and either crank up the booming practice music or turn it off, but until they restore their reputation as a physical, break-your-will sort of football team they'll be forever chasing Oregon and USC.
Of all the recent hires, the most important one might be Ron McKeefery.
Who is he, is a fair question.
McKeefery is the new UW strength and conditioning coach from Fresno State and, according to his resume, by way of the SEC, the NFL and Major League Baseball.
While the departing Tim Socha was well regarded and a necessary demanding personality, the reality is the UW offensive and defensive lines didn't push anyone out of their way this past season.
Individual playing weights were at an all-time high across the O-line. Certain linemen on each side of the ball didn't look particularly fit. Endurance was an issue. The Huskies got beat five times in the fourth quarter. Arizona State outscored them 21-6, WSU 17-6, Montana 10-0, UCLA 7-0 and Colorado 10-7 over those final 15 minutes.
It's time to try something different to reclaim some prowess in the trenches and McKeefery is as good a place to start as any.
"He is an outside-the-box thinker," DeBoer said, "who excels in balancing foundational principles with new, cutting-edge ideas."
How about simply making someone strong enough to knock the other guy on his backside?
Obviously, the Huskies' offensive approach crafted by the departed John Donovan didn't work.
The new staff counters with four offensive coordinators to replace Donovan, with a certain pecking order.
First there's DeBoer, a former OC at Fresno State, Indiana, Eastern Michigan, Southern Illinois and Sioux Falls. Now the Husky head coach, he makes no bones about the fact that he still prefers to call most plays.
He also says he trusts Ryan Grubb, his Fresno State offensive coordinator that came with him to Seattle to make things happen.
They're supplemented by Nick Sheridan, the recently fired Indiana offensive coordinator and now the UW tight-ends coach.
Add to this mix of offensive brain thrusts holdover wide-receivers coach Junior Adams, who was the Western Kentucky OC and served as the Huskies' interim OC once Donovan was fired.
That's a lot of playbooks stacked up in one place.
For continuity sake, offensive-line coach Scott Huff and Adams were retained, with Huff needing to rebuild his reputation some after last season's line struggles.
For the second time, Lee Marks will follow Keith Bhonapha as a running-backs coach into a program. The former Boise State back, with a one-year gap as a strength coach, took over as the Broncos RB coach after Bhonapha, who carried the ball at Hawaii, left to coach at the UW. Now Marks is in, Bhonapha out, in Montlake.
Marks also served as interim coach once DeBoer left for Seattle and helped guide Fresno State to a 31-24 victory over UTEP in the New Mexico Bowl, enabling the Bulldogs to complete a 10-3 season. The more guys who can handle big responsibility, the better.
Defensively, D-line coach Inoke Breckterfield from Vanderbilt and previously Wisconsin, Pittsburgh, UCLA, Weber State and Montana, might be the best position hire for the Huskies this time around. Anyone who has mentoring Aaron Donald on his resume has to be taken seriously.
The great college football teams don't win without a monster up front on defense. See Steve Emtman, 1991 Huskies.
Breckterfield will be asked to create one. Inoke, meet fellow Hawaiian and redshirt freshman Kuao Peihopa, a logical candidate but often injured his past season.
The UW could have made a really big splash and excited the fan base had it been able to convince Orlondo Steinauer to leave his lofty position as a CFL head coach for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats to run the Husky defense, but it didn't happen.
Instead, DeBoer will entrust the UW defensive decision-making to two people rather than just one, William Inge and Chuck Morrell. Truthfully, this move was met by a yawn by team supporters.
Inge previously served as a defensive coordinator for Fresno State, Indiana, Buffalo and Northern Iowa, while Morrell was an NAIA head coach for Montana Tech and the DC for North Dakota and Sioux Falls.
It should be noted that Fresno State's defense wasn't always stellar this past season, giving up 40 points to Boise State, 37 to UCLA, 32 to Nevada and 30 to UNLV.
Throughout the recent turmoil of the Lake era, the Huskies still were able to preserve their reputation as a program where defensive backs come to make themselves into NFL players. See Bookie Radley-Hiles, formerly of Oklahoma whose college football future currently remains unknown.
Yet neither Lake secondary coach Will Harris nor Terrence Brown were retained, opening up jobs for Morrell and Juice Brown.
Of course, all of the new guys will need to show they can take advantage of their newfound Power 5 platform and recruit well, working in concert with former Michigan talent sleuth Courtney Morgan, or it won't matter what they know about blocking and tackling and covering.
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